Working Comic. The First Day of Christmas. – by Shawn Carter.

Oh god…. that’s what I just mumbled to myself as I thought about trying to use this brain to do anything right now. This pounding head is not going to be good for putting together coherent thoughts. Why am I feeling so awful today? Oh… it’s probably because during that comedy sketch last night I opted to get a real scorpion bowl instead of a scorpion bowl filled with water.

This past week has been good/bad/stressful and good again. Most days someone will ask me how full time comedy is going and while I want to say, “Great! I’ve got a ton of gigs lined up and I’m rich!”, that is simply not the truth. The truth is that most days I think about going and filling out an application at the local convenient store. Not to start a new career at the Tedeschi’s but to help make ends meet. I look at my bank account and I wonder how long I can continue to absorb a net loss each month. Well, at least one more month I figure and then I continue with my life. Hilarious, I know.

It’s not all gloom. I still have a weekly show at Sally O’Briens on Monday nights and a weekly show at Stadium on Tuesday nights. However, I certainly do have a healthy fear of the future. All my weekends are booked in January, but February… well that’s a different story. Do you know what it’s like to just not know if you will make any money in a month? It’s kind of scary.

Enough about that. Let’s talk about the week. Sally’s and Stadium, fun and fun.

Wednesday- I did a comedy show at a church in Boston. I have plenty of clean material but for some reason all I could think about was my dirtiest jokes as I was about to take the stage. The congregation enjoyed the show.. I think. I did tell one joke that I hardly ever do “When I was a child my father told me not to hit anyone below the belt. I thought it was an honor thing. But it turns out we’re just catholic and against ANY form of birth control at all.” That joke received stifled laughter. I got a much bigger laugh by pointing out that a guy tried really hard not to laugh at it.

Thursday- I went to a little open mic in Marshfield called Rafferty’s. It’s run by Chrissy Kelleher. Jimmy Tingle dropped by to do a set. It was a good time.

Friday- did a show at The Comedy Studio. Amazing crowd. Gary Gulman closed the show and killed it of course.

Saturday- another show at The Comedy Studio. This crowd was not exactly on fire like Friday night. We had fun all the same.

Too much alcohol for those reindeer.

Sunday- This is where everything went wrong. I mean it’s not all that bad but I’m hungover so I’m going to tell you that I feel awful. Overall it was a fun night. The Comedy Studio Holiday Party is always a big event. The holiday show is hosted by the hilarious Walsh Brothers. I had never participated in a holiday show sketch until last night. Phoebe Angle wanted to do something for the show and we were trying to think of ideas and then “12 days of christmas” came on the radio and Phoebe said “We could do that” and I agreed. We figured it was a fun silly thing and we could get a lot of people involved. We threw a lot of ideas around and tried to think of comics that might want to be involved in it. Then we tried to think of the lines each person would sing. After all that we contacted the people and asked them to try and think of some lines to sing as well. Once we got input from the comics involved we had to decide which lines we liked best and which ones fit the cadence of the song best.

I’m glad Phoebe thought of the idea and got me on board with it because it ended up being a lot of fun, even if it did result in a brutal hangover.

I’m happy that such funny people wanted to be involved. And these comics not only performed in the sketch but also helped write it. So thanks to: John Baglio, Wes Hazard, Mike O’Brien, Phoebe Angle (of course), Scott Oddo, Sean Donovan, Miguel Perez, Mike Pincus, Jere Pilapil, Christa Weiss and Ted Pettingell.

And thanks to all the audience members that booed Mike O’Brien it was key to the success of the bit and Mike really needed it.